


i want you (in all of your glory)

by Ymae



Series: Sanvers Week 2019 - What if? [4]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Amnesia, F/F, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Maggie's POV, Sanvers Week, Sanvers is endgame even if they're not sure how, angst-ish, set in season four after the whole mind-wipe thing, so pretty much now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 20:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17814899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ymae/pseuds/Ymae
Summary: Post the mind-wipe that made Alex forget that her sister is Supergirl, her memories are starting to degrade slowly.That includes those of Maggie. So when Kara calls her to take Alex out of the DEO for a little bit, how are they supposed to cope?





	i want you (in all of your glory)

“Kara, no, no… this isn’t a good idea, I swear it isn’t. What’s happening? _Her…_ and _I…_ haven’t spoken in over seven months. You can’t force me. I don’t know what’s happening. We broke up, didn’t we? We wanted to get married, didn’t we? We—”

“Alex, _listen_ to yourself,” Kara says. Her voice is hushed, thick with tears. “You’re just… you’re just confused all the time now. It’s all my f-fault...” she interrupts herself, wrapping a heavy arm around Alex’s shoulders. She squeezes gently, so cautiously, as though it isn’t just Alex’s mind that’s full of holes, but her body, too. 

“Her name _is_ Maggie… right?” Alex asks, concerned. There’s something pleading in her voice, something lonely and scared. Flakes of dust dance around her head in the light of the neon lamps. “Why did I want to marry a girl? I’m not gay… Kara, am I gay? Okay, no, wait, I know this one—” Kara’s blue eyes are so big, her smile so thinly stretched it’s going to crack open any time now. Alex steps out of her hug, to the ugly silver mirror fixed on the wall beside the bar table. She chuckles. “Yeah, I’m definitely gay.” 

“Thank _Rao._ I wasn’t looking forward to having _that_ conversation again.” Kara shakes her head as she sits on one of the bar stools, her shiny hair in a neat ponytail, her clothes way too proper for a place like this. 

“Why would you take me to… to… Mag-Maggie?” Alex asks, serious again, sitting opposite of her sister, her face creased in concern. Her voice flutters like a moth without light, feeling around in the dark, insecure and afraid.

Kara sighs. “You remember how I told you about J’onn wiping your mind.”

“With my permission.”

Kara smiles slightly. “Of course. And how I said it was to protect a secret, which I can’t tell you about—”

“—also with my permission.”

“And how it all went wrong because that secret is so… _life-changing,_ and _huge_ —”

“… that it got my mind all messed up, and my memories shaky. I know, Kara, you’ve told me this before, at least a hundred times.”

“And I just bet there are another hundred times you don’t remember I told you.” Kara reaches out to Alex, squeezing her fingers on the polished surface. “It’s just, you’re losing _so much._ ” Are those tears on Kara’s cheeks, reflecting the light? She brushes them away quickly, but Alex must notice them anyway, because her face softens up even more, if that’s possible, and she straightens, shifting visibly into Big Sister Mode. At least _that_ is something they couldn’t erase. Kara clears her throat and continues. “And as much as I _wish_ I could make this all about me and what we lost, all that _stuff_ we’ve been through that you don’t remember anymore, I can’t be that selfish, and… like J’onn said, your memories are wiping themselves out backward.”

“So I remember breaking up with Maggie, and proposing and stuff, but not our first Valentine’s Day, or our first date, or how we met.” Alex is being overly patient with her sister now—she clearly knows all this—but she’s also stalling, postponing the meeting. 

Kara is clearly about to add something, the reason why all this is so important, maybe, but Maggie can’t hold herself back anymore. She feels bad enough for watching from the shadows, for soaking up this undoubtedly intense and emotional sister-to-sister conversation, but she, too, has been stalling.

The minute Alex walked into that bar, it’s like the last—has it really been eight months?—didn’t happen at all. But also like they did, and lasted a lifetime. Alex looks good, objectively. She has that sexy new haircut that looks so confident and comfortable at the same time. Her hair’s just getting redder, and shorter, and her clothes are just getting subtly gayer. At least that hasn’t changed. 

And her eyes, her eyes… there’s something so  _infinite_ in Alex’s eyes. She has a thousand new laugh crinkles and cry crinkles and worry crinkles all around them, but her skin is smooth as ever. She looks tired. She always used to look tired, but now that tiredness is buried in every inch of her, in the way her hands move, her mouth smiles, in the way she walks. It’s very similar to what Maggie feels when she looks in the mirror. 

She almost feels boring in comparison with Alex. Her hair is a little darker now, a little longer even. Her clothes are the same as ever, except for the mountain of stuff she’s thrown out that belonged to Alex, that she packed into her moving boxes because they’d been living together so long she couldn’t separate anymore. She’s made it to Captain, unsurprisingly; the NCPD Science Division is a tiny department, even more so now that all that anti-alien crap has broken out. It’s been perfect; she’s barely out in the field, and she and Alex haven’t met once. She’s tired all the time. National City’s Worldkiller crisis seems years away even though it’s only been a couple of months, and her hands are full with those bastard Children of Liberty.

Still, how could she have said no to Kara?

“ _I’m really sorry, Maggie. I’m really, really sorry. I know you’re probably trying to forget us, and I’m so sorry I haven’t been keeping contact… but Alexdoesn’tknowI’mSupergirlandshe’slosingtime… and…”_

“ _Breathe—”_

“ _She’_ _s_ _scared and I’m scared and you’_ _r_ _e my last resort. I need you to take her out of the DEO for a couple of days. It’s been hell there. Just take her around the city a little, get her to relax. J’onn says relieving her anxiety could help.”_

“ _I’ll send you the address of a bar, okay? Take her there tomorrow. I’ll be there.”_

Maggie had hung up without asking for any further information. She’d taken a big chunk of her vacation days and said she’d be back in three days time. Then she’s slumped on her bed, wriggled off her jeans, and had lain there, motionless, staring at the ceiling, until she’d fallen asleep from emotional exhaustion.

Kara slips off her stool, hugs Alex one last time, and disappears as quickly as she can without revealing her powers.

Maggie stands there, not taking her place, her hand fidgeting, her tongue heavy. An Alex who doesn’t know her sister is an alien. What’s she like?

For her sake, Maggie would like to think she’s more relaxed, not having to worry about her sister constantly, maybe not feeling the weight of the world for a few seconds at once. But seeing Alex  _here,_ lost, on that stool in this new bar Maggie frequents, looking at her with big eyes, there’s no place for happy dreams. 

Alex has what is basically Martian-induced amnesia. They haven’t found a cure yet. It’s possible Maggie is going to wake up anytime in the next three days to a knife to her throat and Alex’s beautiful fucking face hovering over her hissing,  _“Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my life?”_

Both very valid questions.

What exactly are they hoping to achieve here? Reconciliation? Friendship? True love? All the reasons they can’t be together are still there. But that’s not what Kara wanted when she called, and if Maggie is being honest? She would never forgive herself if she passed up this opportunity. If the next time they’d see each other, Alex would look at her blankly and walk on, crush her heart into more pieces than it’s already in anyway.

“Hey.” Alex squirms in her seat. Then all of a sudden, she’s completely still, her hands flat on her thighs. Deflated.

Maggie’s eyes are stinging with hard tears, and she has to look away.

They are nothing to each other anymore, and yet, this woman sitting right in front of her is the most Maggie has ever been to another person.

She slides onto Kara’s abandoned seat.

“Danvers.”

She blinks tears away. God, she hasn’t forgotten how beautiful Alex is. She could never. But at least when she’d remembered it, lonely in her bed, the urge to kiss her had been so much more impossible to fulfill.

Alex smiles sadly, her eyes big and longing and fixed on Maggie and only Maggie. “Well, you told me you’d see me around,” she quips, lightly enough that she chokes on it. And now Maggie knows it. This was supposed to be a smooth operation (yes, she’s been lying to herself excessively), three days, in and out, separate beds, crying quietly in the night over lost memories and a dream-like time where they’d  genuinely believed that they’d get married, rings and vows and all, the house and the dog and the shared dishwasher and wives and forever. 

Now Maggie knows it. It was supposed to work out with them, and it couldn’t. And she can’t do this, she  _cannot._ She stays, but she’s not going to do this. How do you do something while not doing it? She’s hyperventilating, her heart going so fast she’s sure Kara will fly in at any second, ready with an ambulance waiting outside. 

“Do you really not remember our first Valentine’s Day?” she asks, and her voice breaks clean through.

Alex keeps looking at her, but her forehead creases, and Maggie notices all the little details, still does, and sees how Alex’s hands clench as though she’s trying to fend off an invisible pain.

“I remember… dimmed lights… and a ballroom. Red.” She smiles, painfully. “Black. A dress, I think, and a suit. Hurt. Confrontation. You were almost crying. We were kissing. Dancing. All the important things.”

“I told you you were breathtaking,” Maggie says. Everything Alex said is true, but disconnected. Her voice sounds like she’s straining to remember, not like the real, full, happy memories that Maggie has, the range of emotions she goes through when she thinks of that day. “Do you remember that?”

Alex flinches. It makes Maggie hurt with her, but she ignores it. “I told you about my parents that day, what they did to me. Do you remember how soft your dress was? How you were  _killing_ that prom look? The bouquet I bought you? How when we were tired, we couldn’t find the damn light switch in that giant room, and we danced from one corner to the other searching for it, and then it turned out it was  _outside_ the door? Do you remember how we cuddled on your couch, and you said we didn’t even drink any alcohol, and I said I’d get the wine and just kept repeating it but you wouldn’t move, and I wouldn’t move, and we fell asleep?”

Half of that were things Maggie hadn’t even consciously remembered until a few minutes ago, but now they’re so precious they make her cry. She’s full sobbing, her hands clutching the corners of the bar table, shaking so badly her whole body trembles with them. Alex reaches out to her to comfort her, but something in Maggie’s eyes when she looks up must hold her back because she retreats to her seat.

The bartender shoots them a brief, curious look, but doesn’t interrupt them by asking them to order a drink.

“ _Do you remember?_ ” Maggie asks again, and she can see in Alex’s eyes she’d hoped it was a rhetorical question. 

“I don’t,” Alex admits, quietly. She’s so still, her cheeks dry, that it just makes Maggie cry harder. She isn’t the crier in this relationship. Wasn’t. Because there isn’t a relationship. There’s just the two of them, in this bar Alex doesn’t know, would probably not know even if Maggie had shown it to her when they’d still been together. “I don’t remember any of that. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Maggie, I—“

“God, don’t say my name,” Maggie whispers, and she knows she’s being mean, knows she’s being cruel, but there’s a part of her that can’t help it, won’t. “Don’t say my name like that, Alex, like you know me, ‘cause you don’t. You didn’t even remember you’re a _lesbian_ five minutes ago—”

“I was _joking,_ Mags! Okay, I’m still _me_!”

“But this isn’t a joke to me! You don’t remember how we met! You don’t remember how fucking _obnoxious_ you were saying it was _your_ jurisdiction even though… even though it was _mine._ ” 

“But I do remember,” Alex says, quietly. “We used to laugh about it so often. Even after we got engaged. I still remember _that._ I still remember _us._ ”

“So you remember how we broke up?” Maggie spits, hurt and so, so helpless. “You remember how I let you keep the rings because I _knew_ I’d throw them away if I kept them and maybe you wouldn’t. You remember how I was sitting at home—at what _used_ to be our home—sober and alone and all packed up and just waiting for you to come home so you could break up with me? Is that what you remember? Because that wasn’t _us._ That wasn’t _just_ us. Even all the things we said, all the good things about how you’d helped me heal and I’d helped you be yourself, we were more than that. We were _happy,_ Alex, and we were happy _because_ of all the crap we’d been through before and _because_ we remembered everything we said to each other. And now—”

“What now?” Alex asks, wiping at her cheeks furiously, and Maggie’s done it. Alex is crying, and Alex isn’t looking at her anymore, and Alex doesn’t look angry, just lost and broken and _no._ “Now you don’t love me anymore? Because I know that. No one can stay in love for _eight months,_ Maggie. No one as brilliant and smart and _amazing_ as you.” 

“How dare you assume how I feel about you,” Maggie says, and it’s not at all what she means, but it is, in a way. She’d grieved Alex so long. Alex had had J’onn and Kara and Winn and Eliza, but Maggie had had to deal with it alone, and it pissed her off that drinking and sex weren’t what she did anymore. Her grieving methods had become healthier, but just as messy, and some days, she’d hated Alex for making her a better person. For being so damn unforgettable. 

“What does that even _mean,_ ” Alex says, so tired. 

What it means is that Alex has apparently no memories and no idea, either, because  _love_ is the one word that Maggie just can’t erase from her Alex-vocabulary. She can’t imagine life anymore where she thinks of Alex and doesn’t immediately add,  _the woman I’m in love with,_ or  _the idiot I love,_ or  _Alex fucking Danvers whose crazy-in-love wife I was supposed to be by now._

“I see,” Alex says when there’s been a minute without an answer. Her hands twitch, and she reaches out to Maggie one last time, retracts her hand one last fatal time. Alex rises from her seat, clutching her phone and probably already dialing Kara’s number, and she glances at Maggie one last time, tears glinting on her cheeks, and walks away.

_Don’t you dare, Danvers,_ Maggie’s head says, but her head is tired and rough and mean and lonely, and not drunk enough in every way. And Maggie slides from her seat quickly and runs after Alex, into the cold night air, where Alex is standing, her phone tucked into her pocket, blinking red and  _dead._ Kara isn’t coming. Or maybe she is. Does it matter? 

Alex wants kids, and Maggie doesn’t. But Alex turns around and looks at her like she wants _her_ , and Maggie wants _Alex_. Alex’s brilliant mind is falling apart piece by piece, but her heart is still there, shining in her eyes like a goddamn sun. 

“Alex,” Maggie calls. She reaches her, out of breath from reasons that certainly aren’t the short run.

“I still don’t remember,” Alex reminds her sadly, the soft night air moving in a breeze, blowing her short hair gently from her face. “Mags, I’m _scared._ ” 

“Me too,” Maggie answers sincerely. Alex is taller than her, and suddenly she has to laugh because of all the annoyance she’s had to fake when Alex teased her about it. Alex might not remember, but Maggie does, _so well,_ and she wants all of those memories, the good, and the soft, and the sad, and the broken. She wants that first dance in red and that last dance in blue. She wants _all of it._ And she wants Alex to have _all of it._ Not for Maggie’s sake, but for her own. She wants Alex to have all the things, and maybe them being together doesn’t match up with everything else, but right now, it’s all she’s got. 

“I just… I still want to… I look at you, and I all I want to do—” Alex gestures helplessly, all that tiredness dripping from her hands like water, feeding the ground, washing out of Alex’s blood.

“Life is too short,” Maggie says, and she knows her heart has taken over because her whole face is soft and loving, soft and loving for _Alex._ They step towards each other in the night’s gentle breeze. 

Maggie’s hands reach out to Alex this time, and she doesn’t retreat. She grips Alex’s shoulders and hugs her tighter than she ever has, holding on to her body heat, and being held onto. Then they step back a little, and it’s Maggie who cups Alex’s cheeks, and it’s Alex who threads a gentle hand through Maggie’s hair. They kiss.

No explosions go off. There’s no big bang. They’re both too exhausted, and they’re both too gentle for that and too easy to break.

But Alex’s lips are so, so soft, and familiar. They’re always going to be familiar, even when the stars go out and Alex’s memories will have disappeared one by one, and her loved ones will have to spend a thousand years bringing them back to her. As long as Maggie is one of them, it’ll be okay.

As long as they’re kissing each other, right now, as long as the new memories they make are good and true and real, it’ll be okay.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "All of Your Glory" by Broods.  
> I hope you enjoyed. I'm considering writing a second part to this, and I'd love to know what you think! :)


End file.
